China Shutting Down Some (But Not All!) Fake Apple Stores...

from the and-they'll-pop-back-up... dept

With all the attention paid last week to the news of completely fake Apple stores popping up in China, you figured Chinese officials had to do something. Apparently, they started investigating, and shut down some of the fake Apple stores that were found in Kunming city. Perhaps most interesting, however, is that they let some of the stores stay open -- including the very story discovered by the BirdAbroad blog, which kicked off all of this attention. Apparently, officials found that that particular store "has a licence to trade and is selling genuine Apple products."

Filed Under: apple stores, china, copycats

Send In The Clones: Startup Raises $90 Million To Copy Other Startup

from the interesting-strategies dept

For all the talk of companies "copying" each other, it's always interesting to see how things work in practice. Last year, we wrote about the excellent book Copycats, which discusses both successes and failures in companies that simply try to copy others. In general, what it finds is that merely copying someone else isn't enough to be successful. You have to innovate, and do something better to be a success. But, one of the "easy" targets, if you want to just copy and still find a market, is to copy in a different territory. For example, it's well known that for every successful US internet startup, a near direct clone pops up in China pretty quickly. The same thing happens in Europe at times as well. But sometimes things get odd.

There's been a ton of buzz lately around the startup Airbnb, which a lot of investors apparently weren't impressed with early on, but which has been able to build up pretty massive adoption pretty quickly, leading to stories of it apparently being about to raise $100 million on a staggering $1 billion valuation. That seems a bit rich, but in the world of Winner Take All economics, you can see how it could make sense for some early investors.

What seems like a bit more of a head-scratcher is when a brand new clone in the space then raises $90 million just a few months after launching... and hires 400 people. This company, Wimdu, seems to be focusing on Europe. If it can pull that off, that's something, but this sets off basic alarm bells. It sounds like a company and investors just throwing money after a problem, rather than actually innovating. Historically, just throwing money after a market tends not to work nearly as well as people expect. Airbnb is apparently worried about this particular clone, but I think it may be overreacting. Money isn't everything, and a company that focuses on providing a better overall experience, rather than worrying about clones, seems like it'll be better positioned to succeed long term.

Filed Under: copycats, funding, startups
Companies: airbnb, wimdu

Why Just Copying Isn't Enough: Cargo Cult Science And Copycats

from the gotta-leapfrog dept

We've talked about cargo cults in the past around here, and Boing Boing points us to a great video of a talk by Jeff Veen, which argues that copycat innovators are a form of a cargo cult: The point he's making is one that we've tried to make here many times in the past -- though his analogy is much better than most we've used. Basically, it's easy to just copy what you think is cool about a product, but that's rarely (if ever) enough to actually get people to buy. This is an issue we see all the time when people get upset about our position on patents. They say that, without patents, someone would just come in and "steal" the idea, and then where would you be? But, the fact is, just being able to "copy" the product isn't enough to get it sold.

If you're truly innovative, then you not only understand your product better than some random copycat, but you also understand what makes your market want your product.

That can't be copied. Not easily. Yes, the copycat may win over some customers, but it's not the same. And, by knowing the product and the market better than anyone else, you should also be able to stay ahead of the curve and keep innovating. The copycat just has to catch up -- they're running towards where they think you were, when you may already be well past that.

But the comparison to a cargo cult is quite accurate. The cargo cultists built up their faux airports, thinking that it would bring in the same wonders as the real wartime airports did. Companies make copycat iPhones because they think that people will suddenly rush to buy them like they bought the iPhone. But it doesn't work that way.

Filed Under: cargo cult, copycats, copying, design, innovation, iphone, jeff veen, patents